Lisbon is hilly

Without Sat Nav, or anything approaching the communication systems we now take for granted, fighting battles during the English Civil War was akin to ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ or 'Pinning the Tail on the Donkey.’ Before you could join in battle, the two armies had first to find each other and arrange a time agreeable to both for fighting to commence. I was reminded of this in Lisbon when we hired an Uber from our rented apartment to the station. What we didn’t realise was that we had just hired the most incompetent Uber driver in Lisbon. First of all, he couldn’t find our building, even though it was numbered and on a major road. He suggested a well-known café a quarter of a mile away. Off we trudged, our wheeled suitcases clattering like a seventeenth century army on cobbles. 

No Uber.

 For a reason we couldn’t quite fathom, he suggested another meeting point, Praça Luis de Camoes a famous square dominated by the statue of Portugal’s most famous poet. It was, though half a mile farther on. Uphill. 

We got there. No Uber. We waited, were just about to give up, when his car turned a corner and crawled into sight. No explanations, no recriminations, we were too angry for that and more importantly had a train to catch. 

“Santa Apolonia,” we said and sat back in relief as he navigated the streets and took us to an obscure Lisbon suburb, so obscure it doesn’t even appear on google. 

“This isn’t the station,” we said.

“You didn’t say the station,” he said.

This was hard to compute. Imagine an American or German family in London laden with luggage asking for Paddington or Kings Cross or a Spanish family in New York asking for Grand Central. Where would they expect to be taken, the station or an obscure cul-de-sac in Kensington or Queens? 

“The fee would be another 4 euros,” he said, if we expected him to take us to the destination he should have gone to in the first place. 

Much later, I Googled Santa Apolonia, Lisbon. Page after page hit upon the station. Nothing else. I’m guessing our driver had licked his finger and held it up to the wind. 

The monastery of Sao Vincent de Fora

A fragment of the interior

Mausoleum. All those dead bodies.

The Nativity in terracotta with more than a few spectators. Flamboyant, ornate and far from the Protestant tradition. 

The Pantheon seen from the monastery of Sao Vincent de Fora

Lisbon is an exciting city, intensely cosmopolitan, and  with a brilliant subway we didn’t discover until our second visit. The only problem is it’s built on bloody hills. Imagine a particularly complex Escher diagram with hills instead of stairs. Insanely steep hills. A rollercoaster in every direction. Give me a flat Texan plain where mountains know their place—beautiful from a distance. 

We sat back and sighed in relief as our train trundled north to Tomar, which was mercifully flat. Portuguese railways are state owned and presumably subsidised. The fares are cheap, and the trains are clean and punctual. 

But why Tomar? A wedding.

All weddings are special; this, held outdoors, especially so—an advertiser’s dream—it was like walking into a film set: golden sunlight streaming through fig trees, olives and vines; the confetti, dried wildflowers taken from the ground we were standing on. 

The setting was an advertiser’s dream; the food and unlimited wine were Mike Keyton’s dream, and then there were the people, intriguing, open and friendly. I confided in my godson, whose wedding it was, that everyone looked so interesting, it would be fun to get to know them all. “Go for it,” he said. “Everyone we’ve invited are your kind of people. They’ll talk to anyone.” (I don’t think he meant ‘even you.’) I took him at his word and like a merry dodgem car bumped into one group after another and discovered new worlds.

Above and below, the Praça Republica dominated by Tomar's founder and Templar knight, Gualdim Pais. The entire town forms  a strict grid system designed by the Templar knights, and a 'sacred geometry' is revealed in the four main streets forming a perfect four armed cross, each arm pointing to four of the city's convents. 

Credit all  photos: BM Keyton

We had a day to recover, a day spent in Tomar before returning to Lisbon and eventually home. And Tomar is interesting, let me tell you….note the statue and what's floodlit in the night sky.  (to be continued.)